I learnt yesterday how to stitch together a panoramic photograph (so you will be seeing more) and am now feeling suitably pleased with myself for learning a new photographic skill *smiles from ear to ear*...
I also decided that more than enough time had passed without any sign of a tour blog so here is some more from the travel journal and stash of pictures we have.
Chefchoan to Fez. Thurs 22nd Sept.
Day started really early with camp dogs fighting, needed to be up anyway. Cold shower and on the road but an easy slow start stopping at a little roadside place for great coffee and lovely little potato cake with cheese which seemed to make the world a better place and the riding 100% better. Enjoyed the roads doing a fair bit of overtaking through the farm lands, small hills, and plains of yellow and black scorched earth, mile after mile of people on donkeys carrying heavy loads, farmers herding cattle, sheep and goats stopping to take photos and getting friendly smiles and waves from people with astonished looks on their faces, lots of children. Stopped at Valoublis, the most astonishingly beautiful Roman town with columns, houses, places of worship, baths and so many mosaics with bright colours still just laying in the open air in so many rooms, we just couldn't believe our eyes, there were court houses and streets, courtyards as far as the eye could see...truly amazing! an experience you just wont get anywhere else because there IS no other place like it in the world...
The amazing tanneries where Morocco's leather are bought to treat and die befor it's made into the finest goods.
I also decided that more than enough time had passed without any sign of a tour blog so here is some more from the travel journal and stash of pictures we have.
Chefchoan to Fez. Thurs 22nd Sept.
Day started really early with camp dogs fighting, needed to be up anyway. Cold shower and on the road but an easy slow start stopping at a little roadside place for great coffee and lovely little potato cake with cheese which seemed to make the world a better place and the riding 100% better. Enjoyed the roads doing a fair bit of overtaking through the farm lands, small hills, and plains of yellow and black scorched earth, mile after mile of people on donkeys carrying heavy loads, farmers herding cattle, sheep and goats stopping to take photos and getting friendly smiles and waves from people with astonished looks on their faces, lots of children. Stopped at Valoublis, the most astonishingly beautiful Roman town with columns, houses, places of worship, baths and so many mosaics with bright colours still just laying in the open air in so many rooms, we just couldn't believe our eyes, there were court houses and streets, courtyards as far as the eye could see...truly amazing! an experience you just wont get anywhere else because there IS no other place like it in the world...
Loads of photos and catch our breath in the cool shade from the hot, hot sun. Lots of pussy cats and dogs just wander around here, they just seem to live wild...a really hard life for them but the lives of all seem to be hard here, living on largely dusty unfirtile earth in little more than shacks on the side of the road with baskets of melons (the one thing that seems to grow in abundance along with prickly pear fruit) or handmade rugs, hats, pottery for those slightly better off, it's a dusty, hard life.
clothes washing at the local river
..
..Went to Meknes with the idea of staying but after an hous and a half of the scaryest riding I have ever done we left empty handed,no clue, no room/campsite just the memory of a bus so rammed full of people and children waving and giggling at the scared face I was pulling as I tried to avoid the holes where drain covers should have sat, traffic that crossed your path in every direction, donkeys, took,took's and old wooden trucks belching out plooms of black smoke, cab drivers with beat up fourty year old cars (all the same cars and all the same coulour....colour changed from town to town) scooters everywhere, we just could not spot a place to stay so we rode on towards Fez. So hungry we stopped at the roadside for a tagine,some bread and watched the bustle of life as it rolled on by. Our host was nice enough and smiled at me, only after I realized his odd face when we ordered two....they were huge when they arrived and were supposed to be one for two people, he was smiling as he knew he was getting double money! Race the sunset to Fez hooked up with a cab driver, friendly guy who we chased through the streets to a hotel (an exciting, fast ride) happy days...went walking in fez's bustling streets for supplies and the most amazing fruit and yogurt desert (well earned) showered, film then tomorrow we will meet back up with our new friend for a trip to the ancient medina of Fez. Another crazy day, looking forward to the quiet south now and the promice of open views and desert.
Fez...
The amazing tanneries where Morocco's leather are bought to treat and die befor it's made into the finest goods.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake, my mother told me once I was a gypsy...I'm glad to say she is right. The great affair is to move, it's like talking with people of other centuries, Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover!
